Orconomics: A Satire

Orconomics is generic dungeon fantasy, buttressed by load-bearing puns. In this world, adventuring is big business, with adventurer support services and horde-backed securities making up a major part of the kingdom’s GDP. Heroes are part of a guild, which organizes the violence and looting and ensures that it is mostly directed outwards at designated Forces of Evil like orcs, goblins, and drakes. A goblin that doesn’t want to run the risk of getting dismembered can put in for the Noncombatant Paper Carrier status and get a little green booklet protecting them from arbitrary murder.

Gorm is a washed up Dwarven berserker who spares a Goblin’s life out of arbitrary pique and finds himself drawn back into one last quest with a party consisting of tropey fuck-ups. The Elven Marbles, a set of orc funerary stones named after the elves who “recovered” them, have gone missing, and the legendary Seventh Hero is prophesied to recover them. Gorm has to figure out how to get his companions: an Elven ranger addicted to potions, a very spoony bard, two wizards who can’t stand each other, a silent weaponmaster, and a hapless scribe, to fight together or die separately. They wander around the Freedlands, looking for the marbles, fighting various creatures and thugs, learning to overcome their weaknesses, and eventually realize that Capitalism Was The Real Monster All Along.

Nothing in this novel is bad, per se, even the puns are kind of charming (FOEs and NPCs), but at the same time nothing in this novel is good either. It’s the textbook example of mid. The last 20% develops a little momentum, but it’s a long 300+ pages getting there.

Comedy is hard and few writers are Terry Pratchett. If this wasn’t for a book club, I would have abandoned it around chapter 3.